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Kent Academic Repository Full Text Document (Pdf) Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Waldstein, Anna (2019) Smoking as Communication in Rastafari: Reasonings with 'Professional" Smokers and 'Plant Teachers'. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology . ISSN 0014-1844. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1627385 Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/74404/ Document Version Author's Accepted Manuscript Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html !!! 1 Title: Smoking as Communication in Rastafari: Reasonings with ‘Professional’ Smokers and ‘Plant Teachers’ Author: Anna Waldstein; School of Anthropology an Conservation, Marlowe Building, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NR; +44(0)1227823989; [email protected] ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6384-5770 Word Count: 10,100 2 Smoking as Communication in Rastafari: Reasonings with ‘Professional’ Smokers and ‘Plant Teachers’ Abstract: In Rastafari, smoking herbs (cannabis) and tobacco is central to spiritual practices, such as grounding (the process of initiation into Rastafari) and reasoning (ritual discussions). This paper presents ethnographic research with (primarily) Jamaican Rastafari smokers in England. It shows that smoking is considered to be a ‘professional’ activity that communicates dedication to the movement, aids in learning different dialects and modes of speech, and facilitates experiences of communication with the herbs ‘herself.’ Through various rituals that ‘professional’ smokers engage in, herbs can become a ‘plant teacher,’ which Tupper (2008: 300) defines as ‘a natural divinatory mechanism that can provide esoteric knowledge to adepts skilled in negotiating its remarkable effects.’ An appreciation of smoking as a form of multi-species communication between ‘professional’ smokers and ‘plant teachers’ recasts the role of agency in anthropological studies of smoking and contributes to our understanding of consciousness and intentionality in both humans and plants. Key Words: multi-species ethnography, ethnobotany, cannabis, agency, consciousness, habitual smoking, England !!! 3 Smoking as Communication in Rastafari: Reasonings with ‘Professional’ Smokers and ‘Plant Teachers’ Introduction Smoking and burning are elemental practices of Rastafari, a social, spiritual, and political movement indigenous to Jamaica and growing in popularity among African peoples on the continent and throughout the diaspora. From a Rastafari perspective, burning is purifying in both a literal and symbolic sense. Fire is used to clear and fertilise agricultural lands, while ‘burning Babylon,’ (i.e. speaking out against corruption) spiritually incinerates social injustice. The smoke of herbs (cannabis) and other incenses may be used to bathe and perfume the hair and skin, as well as clear away negative spirit(s) from an area or person. Many Rastafari people also smoke herbs (and often tobacco), in the form of spliffs (hand- rolled cigarettes, usually smoked individually) and chalices (water-pipes, generally smoked in groups) as a meditation aid or to improve health (see Congo-Nyah et al. 2013). While destructive capabilities of smoke and fire are respected, Rastafari learn to harness their power to stimulate growth and healing. During the 2010/11 academic year I co-organised an international, multidisciplinary, academic conference on psychedelic consciousness. As part of the anthropological contribution and to make sure that cannabis was represented, I invited Rt. Hon. Binghi Congo-Nyah, an aspiring Nyahbinghi high priest, to give a presentation about herbs and Rastafari. We met for the first time in my university office on the opening day of the conference, along with two of my former students and one of Congo-Nyah’s bredrin (brethren). Congo-Nyah told us that the event was going to be historic because it would be the first academic conference to include a plant on the programme of speakers. He then went on to explain that he would not actually be making a presentation; instead the herbs would be 4 speaking through him. For a year following the conference one of my old students (the other moved abroad), the bredrin and I made regular visits (sometimes individually, other times as a group) to the BaRaKa Tabernacle, a small, smoky room in south London, where Congo-Nyah offers mentorship in Rastafari history, theology and culture, as well as spiritual guidance. We were engaging in a process of grounding, which Homiak describes as initiation into Rastafari based on mutual exploration of self and other through ritual smoking and discussion. Among other things, our year of grounding led to a co-authored, scholarly publication that put several ‘communications’ from the herbs in writing (i.e. Congo-Nyah et al. 2013). The idea of smoking as communication is not new. Klein (1993) describes how cigarettes are used as instruments of communication in literature and film, as well as how smoking involves an implicit language of gestures. In many Native American rituals, tobacco is burned so the smoke will carry messages to the spirit world and/or Creator (Alderete et al. 2010; Makosky Daley et al. 2006). However, my experience with Congo-Nyah also suggested a different kind of communication, between smoker and plant. This paper takes a closer look at the communicative aspects of smoking in Rastafari, using ethnographic data from England (the largest of the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom), which I collected between 2011 and 2016. It shows how smoking herbs communicates Rastafari social values and cultural knowledge, and is integral to the process of learning Rastafari ways of discourse. It also suggests that Rastafari smokers in England have ‘professional’ knowledge and skills that can make them more receptive to botanical communications. In other words, when smoked in a Rastafari context, herbs assumes the role of ‘plant teacher,’ which Tupper (2008: 300) defines as ‘a natural divinatory mechanism that can provide esoteric knowledge to adepts skilled in negotiating its remarkable effects.’ An appreciation of smoking as a form of multi- species communication between ‘professional’ smokers and ‘plant teachers’ recasts the role of !!! 5 agency in anthropological studies of smoking and also has important implications for 21st century cannabis policies, as well as for our understanding of plant and human consciousness. Anthropological Perspectives on Smoking, Plant Agency and Cross-Species Communication The anthropological literature on smoking is generally conflated with work on cigarettes and the tobacco industry (see Kohrman and Benson 2011 for a review of the anthropology of tobacco). Much of this literature is in medical anthropology and is aimed at cessation (e.g. Pego et al. 1995; Quintero and Davis 2002; Marshall 2005; Makosky Daly et al. 2006; Alderete et al. 2010), although Schivelbusch’s (1993) historical work highlights the role of tobacco smoking in contemplation and concentration among 17th and 18th century writers. Likewise, while smokers’ voices are absent from tobacco control policies (Bell and Dennis 2013), there is ethnographic evidence that smoking cigarettes has positive benefits, which persist despite the known risks (e.g. Zhao and Davey 2015). Global health policies are based on the assumption that people smoke because they are addicted to nicotine and enslaved by the tobacco industry (Bell and Dennis 2013). However, simple addiction models don’t fully explain tobacco’s attraction to humans (Black 1984) and diminish smokers’ agency (Bell and Dennis 2013). Moreover, they completely overlook the agency of the tobacco plant, or indeed the cigarette. Throughout history, Western philosophers have held a variety of views on the question of whether plants have souls, intelligence and/or consciousness, but most have assumed them to be unthinking and inanimate, without the ability to sense or move (Marder 2012). However, work in plant neurobiology and chemical ecology suggests that plants exhibit intelligent behaviours, such as memory and communication (Myers 2015). According to Trewavas (2003) living plants exhibit a ‘computational capability’ to scrutinise their environments and interact with their neighbours in the form of resource competition, release of nitrogen into 6 soil, and even chemical warnings of predatory attack. For example, tobacco plants have an agency that includes exuding sticky scents that attract pollinators and using light to predict the growth patterns of neighbouring plants (Russell and Rahman 2015). However, many plant scientists are careful to avoid anthropomorphizing (i.e. ascribing intentionality, desire, etc. to) plants, and emphasize that because plants have abilities that are amazing on their own terms they should not be compared to humans (Myers
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